Sean's nearly 2/3 into the rotation and, man oh man, it's a busy one. Today marks his 12th straight day working. Almost every day lasted about 12 hours. It hurts me to even imagine working that much.
He started the rotation with a couple weeks in the ER where he examined lots of patients and helped determine surgical candidates. Those were generally 12-hour shifts, sometimes night, sometimes day. Sean had some crazy sleep adjustments those weeks.
Then he tried out two weeks in cardiothoracic surgery. They have some crazy devices to help out your heart! There was even a guy who just got the first continuous flow artificial heart (which means he has no pulse!). The hours were beastly- the day he was part of the heart transplant was an 18-hour day. There were several days he didn't get to see the boys at all (Sean missed them so bad!). But he did get to learn a lot of technique and scrub in on a lot of fascinating surgeries. One patient didn't handle their ventricular-assist device replacement surgery well and ended up having so many temporary tubes and machines in her chest that they couldn't sew her up. So, obviously, they just cut up an IV bag and had Sean sew it around the hole. Problem solved! Yipes.
Now he's doing general surgery. Although he has 12 hour days, since he starts so early, he usually gets to come home an hour or two before the boys go to bed. He gets to see a whole lot of surgeries and is getting rather good at stitching people up. But he's getting rather tired of hernia repairs. There was one guy who had been so ravaged by necrotizing fasciitis (skin-eating disease) that tissue at least an inch deep had to be removed. Ack.
Sean thinks surgery's pretty cool so far, especially the laproscopic stuff. Could it be his future? Possibly. I shudder to think about a surgical residency though. Would we ever see him? He wouldn't do cardio surgery, though, too many hours. Happily, his family comes first :)
I, for one, am so very excited for the surgical rotation to be over.
Chris really loved surgery too...but I told him he could only do it if we find a place with a great schedule- surgeons work way too much!
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about surgical residencies, but my wife's cousin is doing general surgery at Dartmouth. It seems quite family friendly. From talking to him it sounds about as good as one can hope for surgery, schedule-wise. Every time we have visited, we've been able to see him (so he's clearly not always at the hospital). Also, it is a beautiful hospital and part of the country. Definitely put it on your application list if surgery is in the future!
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